I'll try to go all jawa on some of your things. But it could end up as useless as some of their stuff. Not everything can live on to collect water another day. And yeah, a lot can happen in a year. So who knows. If machines don't work out, I could always try something with plants or something else.
Truuuuuue. But if you know what things are supposed to do and how they work, you can try to make a substitute. Anyone who first invented hyperdrive only had one planet's worth of resources to work with.